iphone backup

I have a iphone 3GS. I recently wiped my old Windows XP system completely and installed Windows 7. I did keep a backup of my old drive on an external backup system for a few months but then started deleting parts of the backup after everything was fine with the new installation of win 7. However, I did not sync my iphone with the new operating system since I did the backup 3 months ago.

I have since downloaded new apps and taken more photos. If I connect my iphone to the newly installed iTunes, it appears to want to want to wipe my device by transferring "blank" to my iphone.

I understand that my apps can be downloaded again from itunes for free as long as I am logged in with the same email addresss, but what if I didnt backup my itunes or deleted the songs?

Why isnt there a way to use the iphone as the "master" account like Xmarks or other syncing tools, so that I can do one way sync to my PC, rather than one way sync TO my iphone?

iTunes is specifically set up to not copy music from your phone to the PC. This is the result of Apple's wrangling with the music companies, which do not want iPhones to be, in essence, portable copy machines, allowing you to copy music from your iPhone to any PC you connect to.

If you have music on your iPhone that's not on your new PC, and you can't access the music files on the old hard drive, you could copy the music from your iPhone into iTunes on the new PC using third party software, such as the (free and excellent) little program available at http://www.getsharepod.com

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abdb469Author Commented: 2011-05-06

That's absurd. Thus doesn't happen on windows or android phones it's so easy to copy stuff around. What happens to photos and apps with data in it?

Photos and app data are saved in your iPhone backup. You would restore the iPhone's data from the backup, if you need to. If in doubt, make a backup of the iPhone (using iTunes backup facility) prior to doing anything else. (Of course, the backup doesn't back up your music - just settings, contacts, photos, app data, etc.)

Absurd, or not, that's the way it is. I suppose the Android people didn't have to make this concession to the music publishers because they don't need their cooperation, as there's no Android music store.

OK, so if your iPhone currently contains your App data, contacts, etc., then it's fine, and you don't need to restore from a backup. You can back up the data on the iPhone by RIGHT-clicking on the iPhone (under Devices, in the lefthand column in iTunes), and clicking "back up".

This creates a backup in the directory c:\documents and settings\[your name]\application data\apple computer\mobilesync\backup

If you look in that directory, you'll see a number of subdirectories with long gibberishy names.
Each of those subdirectories contains a number of files (perhaps a few dozen) which together comprise a backup of your iPhone. Each time you backup your iPhone, a new one of these subdirectories is created. By looking at the dates of the subdirectories, you can see which is the newest. Over time, iTunes automatically deletes older subdirectories, so you typically only have a half dozen or so at a time.

If you have an Iphone backup on an old hard drive, which you want to restore to your iPhone, you would:

1 - back up your iPhone on your CURRENT hard drive.
2 - find the most recently long gibberishy subdirectory in your CURRENT hard drive under c:\documents and settings\[your name]\application data\apple computer\mobilesync\backup .
3 - delete (or move to some other location, in case you might need them in the future) all the files in that subdirectory, but don't delete the subdirectory itself. You want to end up with an EMPTY subdirectory with a long gibberishy name. This is where iTunes will look to find the backup it's going to restore from.
4 - COPY into the now empty gibberishy-named directory the files from the most recent iPhone backup on your old hard drive. Now, these are the files that iTunes will find when it goes looking for the most recent backup.
5 - RESTORE the iPhone using iTunes. It will restore from the backup you just copied over from your old hard drive.

Note that this procedure will NOT work if you have updated the version of the IOS since creating the backup on the old hard drive. That is, a backup created by a particular version of the iPhone IOS generally cannot be used by a newer version of the iOS.

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abdb469Author Commented: 2011-05-30

will try this when back from hols in mid June. Sorry for the delay

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abdb469Author Commented: 2011-06-23

I have to admit I have not done any of the above for fear of losing information. I'm thinking of buying an iMac. Do you know whether I can overcome the above problem if I synced it with a iMac for the first time?

Syncing with the iMac will be exactly the same as syncing with a new (to you) Windows machine.

However, I don't think there's any reason you need to lose any data that is currently on your iPhone.

You can "backup" your phone to the hard drive, using iTunes' built-in backup facility. This will backup your phone's settings, and the data for your apps, but not the apps themselves. It will also not backup your music. It will backup the photos you've taken with the iphone.

You can then COPY the music on your iPhone to your hard drive, using, for example, http://www.getsharepod.com , which is free. it will also copy the photos on your iPhone to your hard drive.

Once you've done this, you can then sync without concern, as you can restore everything from the backups you've just created, if need be.

And... If you originally bought your music at the iTunes store, you don't even have to back up or copy your music! Starting with the current version of iTunes, you are now allowed to download again, for free, as many times as you need to, music you have previously purchased at the iTunes store. And, as before, you can download, again, for free, all your apps.

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abdb469Author Commented: 2011-07-03

slightly off topic, but I thought you would be interested in the following link as it relates to a question you previously commented on for user hedgeselect a while ago when discussing searching mail on iphone.

Ok I need some more help. I finally tired what you suggested. I have just found out that after the restore was completed, not all the apps were downloaded back to the phone.

Whilst I had the data from some of the apps saved to email or exported etc, I forgot to make notes of my Shazam music tags that I built up over the last few years.

For some reason the Shazam app and many other apps did not download. The msg was something like "iphone could not find the apps". iTunes did not ask me to enter my iTunes account password but then I dont understand how some downloaded and others didnt. Anyway, I discounnted my iphone after the half sync, and then downloaded the app from the app store on the phone after logging in and then downloaded the app again, but it doesnt have the music tags.

Is there anyway I can still retrieve the settings from the backup still? FYI - I may or may not have the actual file backups on a external drive in a backup itunes windows folder.

It won't redownload apps that no longer exist and are therefore no longer available on the iTunes store; perhaps some of your apps are in that category.

To get the music tags, you'd have to restore the iPhone from a backup which was made when you had the music tags. Probably easier just to consider the music tags a writeoff.

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abdb469Author Commented: 2011-09-03

no, cant do that! The music tagging was done when I wanted to ditch many old cassette tapes a year ago, so I cant remember the list now. I will almost certainly have the itunes backup files that you mentioned several months ago.

But to be clear, we are distinguishing between the "backup" folder and the actual folder containing all of the downloaded apps right?

The backup I made 2 hours ago will have the tags in there, but what I am saying is, when I restored the phone after wiping it, it probably didnt download the old shazam app because it couldnt find the app, but if I have the old app file then I should be able to do something right?

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abdb469Author Commented: 2011-09-03

Come to think of it, all the apps that didnt download back to my iphone are still on the appstore e.g. tomtom western europe etc.....

I'm not understanding what you mean. If you restore from backup, youll get the data that was on your phone at the time you made the backup for each app. If the app itself doesn't come back from the backup, you *should* be able to download it again from the app store and it should be able to find its data on the phone.

The restore might also miss an app if the VERSION of that app in the AppStore differs from the version that was in your phone at the time you created the backup.

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abdb469Author Commented: 2011-09-03

Ok lets go back to basic. What do you mean by "app data". Are you referring to the app itself, or the data belonging to that app. E.g. Evernote will contain the data that I have built up in the app, as well Notes, Shazam with tags or mSecure with my passwords. They are all data. Now are you saying that when you backup your iphone, the backup contains both the apps AND the data within the apps or just app data excluding the app itself?

If the app itself is excluded from the backup, then assume for one moment that I dont want iTunes to try and redownload a fresh version. I am assuming that the sync process will first look at the iTunes windows folder file that contains all the *.iap files and it will use those files to sync from the computer back to the iphone?

The app itself is entirely distinct from its data. Consider that when you download a new version of an app, you don't obliterate the data created by the old version. The new version is able to access the data created by the old version. So downloading an app will have no effect on its data.

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abdb469Author Commented: 2011-09-07

I've decided to completely wipe my phone again and not bother restoring, my compass still freezes after the restore and I cant even calibrate it. It only works if I dont restore the settings. I cant for some reason transfer all my iphone calendar items to my Outlook on the PC. its not fully syncing. I have checked the manual options in iTunes under Info, but no good. The only items in my outloo are those that I added there myself, and not the itues ones.